The s6-svscan program

s6-svscan starts and monitors a collection of s6-supervise
processes, each of these processes monitoring a single service. It is designed to be either
the root or a branch of a supervision tree.

Interface

s6-svscan [ -S | -s ] [ -c max ] [ -t rescan ] [ scandir ]

If given a scandir argument, s6-svscan switches to it. Else it uses
its current directory as scan directory.

It exits 100 if another s6-svscan process is already monitoring this
scan directory.

If the ./.s6-svscan control directory does not exist,
s6-svscan creates it. However, it is recommended to already have a .s6-svscan
subdirectory in your scan directory, because s6-svscan may try and execute into the
.s6-svscan/crash or .s6-svscan/finish files at some point - so those
files should exist and be executable.

From this point on, s6-svscan never dies. It tries its best to keep
control of what's happening. In case of a major system call failure, which means
that the kernel or hardware is broken in some fashion, it executes into the
.s6-svscan/crash program. (But if that execution fails, s6-svscan exits
111.)

s6-svscan performs an initial scan of its scan directory.

s6-svscan then occasionally runs scans or reaps,
see below.

s6-svscan runs until it is told to stop via
s6-svscanctl, or a signal.
Then it executes into the .s6-svscan/finish program. The program is
given an argument that depends on the s6-svscanctl options that were used.

If that execution fails, s6-svscan falls back on a .s6-svscan/crash
execution.

Options

-S : do not divert signals. This is the default for now;
it may change in a future version of s6.

-s : divert signals - see below.

-c max : maintain services for up to max
service directories. Default is 500. Lower limit is 2. There is no upper limit, but:

The higher max is, the more stack memory s6-svscan will use,
approximately 50 bytes per service.

s6-svscan uses 2 file descriptors per logged service.

It is the admin's responsibility to make sure that s6-svscan has enough available
descriptors to function properly and does not exceed its stack limit. The default
of 500 is safe and provides enough room for every reasonable system.

-t rescan : perform a scan every rescan
milliseconds. If rescan is 0 (the default), automatic scans are never performed after
the first one and s6-svscan will only detect new services when told to via a
s6-svscanctl -a command.
It is strongly discouraged to set
rescan to a positive value under 500.

Signals

s6-svscan always reacts to the following signals:

SIGCHLD : triggers the reaper.

SIGALRM : triggers the scanner.

SIGABRT : acts as if a s6-svscanctl -b command had been received.

By default, it also reacts to the following signals:

SIGTERM : acts as if a s6-svscanctl -t command had been received.

SIGHUP : acts as if a s6-svscanctl -h command had been received.

SIGQUIT : acts as if a s6-svscanctl -q command had been received.

SIGINT : acts as if a s6-svscanctl -6 command had been received.

But if the -s option was given, then instead of those default actions,
s6-svscan uses configurable handlers: it forks and executes a program every time
it receives one of the following signals.

SIGTERM : fork and execute .s6-svscan/SIGTERM

SIGHUP : fork and execute .s6-svscan/SIGHUP

SIGQUIT : fork and execute .s6-svscan/SIGQUIT

SIGINT : fork and execute .s6-svscan/SIGINT

SIGUSR1 : fork and execute .s6-svscan/SIGUSR1

SIGUSR2 : fork and execute .s6-svscan/SIGUSR2

If an action cannot be taken (the relevant file doesn't exist, or isn't
executable, or any kind of error happens), s6-svscan prints a warning
message to its standard error but does nothing else with the signal.

The -s mechanism is useful, for instance, when s6-svscan is running as
process 1 and needs to trap signals such as SIGINT (sent on some systems by
a Ctrl-Alt-Del press) in order to perform some specific work instead of
executing into .s6-svscan/finish on the spot.

s6-svscan will not exit its loop on its own when it receives a signal such as
SIGINT and the -s option has been given. To make it exit its loop,
invoke a s6-svscanctl command from the signal
handling script. For instance, a .s6-svscan/SIGINT script could look
like this:

The reaper

Upon receipt of a SIGCHLD, or a s6-svscanctl -z
command, s6-svscan runs a reaper routine.

The reaper acknowledges (via some
wait()
function), without blocking, every terminated child of s6-svscan, even ones it does not
know it has. This is especially important when s6-svscan is
run as process 1.

If the dead child is a s6-supervise process watched
by s6-svscan, and the last scan flagged that process as active, then it is restarted
one second later.

The scanner

Every rescan milliseconds, or upon receipt of a SIGALRM or a
s6-svscanctl -a command, s6-svscan runs a
scanner routine.

The scanner scans the current directory for subdirectories (or symbolic links
to directories), which must be service directories.
It skips names starting with dots. It will not create services for more than
max subdirectories.

For every new subdirectory dir it finds, the scanner spawns a
s6-supervise process on it. If
dir/log exists, it spawns a s6-supervise process on
both dir and dir/log, and maintains a
never-closing pipe from the service's stdout to the logger's stdin.
This is starting the service, with or without a corresponding
logger.
Every service the scanner finds is flagged as "active".

The scanner remembers the services it found. If a service has been
started in an earlier scan, but the current scan can't find the corresponding
directory, the service is then flagged as inactive. No command is sent
to stop inactive s6-supervise processes (unless the administrator
uses s6-svscanctl -n), but inactive
s6-supervise processes will not be restarted if they die.

Implementation notes

s6-svscan is designed to run until the machine is shut down. It is
also designed as a suitable candidate for
process 1. So, it goes out of its way to
stay alive, even in dire situations. When it encounters a fatal situation,
something it really cannot handle, it executes into .s6-svscan/crash
instead of dying; when it is told to exit, it executes into
.s6-svscan/finish. Administrators should make sure to design
appropriate crash and finish routines.

s6-svscan is a fully asynchronous state machine. It will read and
process commands at any time, even when the computer is in trouble.

s6-svscan does not use malloc(). That means it will never leak
memory. However, s6-svscan uses opendir(), and most opendir()
implementations internally use heap memory - so unfortunately, it's impossible
to guarantee that s6-svscan does not use heap memory at all.

When run with the -t0 option, s6-svscan never polls,
it only wakes up on notifications, just like s6-supervise. The s6 supervision
tree can be used in energy-critical environments.